[-empyre-] Lobal Gestures

[Ricardo Dominguez]

Hola Diana and Tod at s,

I am in agreement about the strategic nature of the politics of the answer
and
that it should be pursued and connected to the local answer as well.

And I do think that multiple communities on the ground and on-line in from
Mexico to Hong Kong understand these networks of violence in terms of the
scales of the strategic global targets-those networks of command and
control that profit from the violence on a local level. But other parts of
these movements the local violence overwhelms the global connections, and
people may not want to dislocate their local concerns beyond that-which is
not necessarily a bad thing to do.

To a certain degree I feel that the lobal politics of the question is
perhaps more sharable and open to the possibility of local-conditions
becoming global-strategic actions-than the reverse. The strategic
connection resonates more from a lobal expression and connection when the
singular qualities of the local are not completely negated by the politics
of the answer on global scale.

Abrazos,
Ricardo



> Ricardo--
> thanks for this. I would add that the violence produced by neoliberalisms
> also works in this networked fashion. The disappearances in Colombia, the
> expulsion of minoritarian communities in Honduras and Guatemala, or the
> massacre of the students (and so many more) in Mexico, police killings of
> black men and so on are not isolated events, but they are also not causal.
> To the politics of the question--how can we make for a more equitable,
> just
> society? the politics of the answer seems shockingly similar--eliminate
> those who challenge our authority or stand in the way of profits. Banks,
> businesses, the drug trade, and the politicians these all control tacitly
> endorse the glocal gestures that are enacted locally, both online
> (Argentina) and on the streets (Ayotzinapa).
> Just a thought!
> Diana
>
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 6:00 AM, Ricardo Dominguez <rrdominguez at ucsd.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hola Tod at s,
>>
>> Thanks for inviting me to participate and meditate on local/global
>> platforms of care, resistance, and activation. Especially in terms of
>> the
>> back and forth quality of activist real-bodies in the streets and
>> data-bodies interacting with one another and amplifying one another. But
>> for the moment I would like to make a more general presentation on the
>> idea of lobal gestures.
>>
>> One of the main projects of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0/2.0 and
>> b.a.n.g. lab is that neoliberalism(s) often function within the
>> trajectory
>> of the glocal—that is transnational corporations parachute their
>> agendas,
>> economies, stores, on a global level to the local level. Starbucks,
>> McDonalds, they're like the cathedrals of old; they are centers of
>> command
>> and control on a glocal level. So the gestures that we have participated
>> in might be named or located around what we name the lobal, and the
>> lobal
>> isn't about trying to establish a field of homogeneity, say, like
>> McDonalds’s golden arches, but more specifically to share a condition
>> of
>> the local to local, as a peer-to-peer gesture, on a global scale.
>>
>> This is perhaps not so much about materialization of the social-as-copy,
>> but a conceptual sharing of a politics of the question. For instance, we
>> could look at the Zapatistas as a lobal network that spreads a question
>> about the nature of what a local in response might be to the golden
>> arches
>> that neoliberalism(s) drop on us and embed into the local space-time
>> continuum. Each response is different for each locality. The local
>> response in San Diego, California to this question is different than the
>> one in Chiapas in terms of seeking alternative forms of living beyond
>> “capitalist realism(s).”
>>
>> Then (and still today) we are faced with the glocal movements of
>> neoliberalism(s), so we had to imagine how we could, on a local level,
>> respond to, trespass, or access conflicts transpiring globally. So those
>> involved in the Zapatistas movement would say, “We share peer-to-peer
>> the
>> politics of the question: ‘what are savage neoliberalism(s) doing
>> where
>> you are?’” But the response or the tactics of both creative
>> resistance or,
>> for us, of disturbance, would be different, because what happens in San
>> Francisco, what happens in Chiapas, or what happens in Mumbai has a
>> material difference on the local level.
>>
>> So lobalism(s) share the politics of the question of what one can
>> access,
>> what one can trespass, disturb, and manifest as alternative conditions
>> that oppose glocal neoliberalisms’ answers to every question and
>> problem.
>> Along with the Zapatistas and other activists, we contend that another
>> world is possible beyond the deep state of glocal neoliberalism(s), and
>> we
>> continue to ask, “How can one disturb and shift the flows of
>> capitalist
>> realism in one’s neighborhood?”
>>
>> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> > Thanks, Richard, for your succinct and thoughtful comments on
>> > premeditation.  I'D be interested to hear more about your thoughts of
>> > resistent usages of new media platforms, from Ricardo's efforts at
>> flood
>> > netting to viral medial forms of protest whose efforts are to "claw
>> back"
>> > (as we used to say in television theory) the very kinds of
>> premediation
>> > you identify.
>> >
>> > All the best,
>> >
>> > Tim
>> >
>> > Timothy Murray
>> > Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>> > Director, Society for the Humanities
>> > http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
>> > Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media
>> > http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
>> > A D White House
>> > Cornell University,
>> > Ithaca, New York 14853
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 12/9/14 2:22 PM, "Richard Grusin" <rgrusin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ricardo Dominguez
>> Associate Professor
>>
>> Visual Arts Department, UCSD
>> http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
>> Principal Investigator, CALIT2
>> http://bang.transreal.org/
>>
>> email: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Diana Taylor
> University Professor
> Professor, Performance Studies and Spanish
> Director, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics
> Tisch School of the Arts
> NYU
> 721 Broadway,6th fl.
> New York, NY 10003
> tel 212 998 1620
> fax 212 995 4571
> http://hemi.nyu.edu
>


-- 
Ricardo Dominguez
Associate Professor

Visual Arts Department, UCSD
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
Principal Investigator, CALIT2
http://bang.transreal.org/

email: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu